Transcript

In some parts of the country, it’s time to tap maple trees to make
syrup. Lester Graham went out to see how it’s done and conducted a
little taste test to see whether real maple syrup stands up to the name
brands you find at the grocery store:

This story started out to be just a little walk in the woods to see
what all the fuss was about. Tapping sap from maples seems like a
quaint old-fashioned idea. After all, doesn’t syrup come from the
grocery store?

Well, anyway, Tom Jameson straightened me out about that. Early in the morning
he led the way through the woods until he found one of the maples he
wanted to tap. First, he drilled a small hole, then drove the tap – or
spline – into the tree:

“We are using an old bit and brace to drill a hole about a half in diameter and an inch and a half to two inches deep. Okay, now I need to just clean that whole little bit. I’ll be ready to drive in the tap, using a hammer to tap it into place. And, already the sap is beginning to run out.”

And that’s it. Sap started dripping right away into a covered bucket
hanging from the tap, or spline.

(Sound of dripping)

It takes a long time to get enough sap, and you need a lot of sap:

“Well, especially with these red maples, you’d need at least 40 gallons
to make one gallon of syrup.”

“So, if you’re doing it commercially, absolutely you want to stick to
sugar maples or hard maples. For the backyard guy that wants to try it,
any maple will work.”

You just have to boil it down sap from soft maples like the red maple
for a lot longer because there’s more water in the sap. And boiling down 40
gallons down to get one gallon of syrup takes a long time, like a good part of a
day or longer.

Jameson says for a lot of people, this is a family event. Empty the
buckets of sap into a big pan over an open fire and keep it boiling. And
a lot of the time you sit around listening to a favorite uncle tell
stories between nips of a flask that keeps getting passed around.

Jameson says it’s a good time, and worth the time spent because real
maple syrup is so good. Well, at least some people think it’s really
good. Jameson admits it’s not what some folks expect:

“Young people that have been raised on the grocery product sometimes
they don’t even like the real thing because it just tastes different to
them. It doesn’t have the extra butter in it or whatever it is. It’s
an acquired taste.”

With that in mind, we decided to do a little taste test. I got some
waffles, some real maple syrup, then three name brand grocery store
syrups… and just to throw everyone a curve, some dark corn syrup.
Then, we got five volunteers at the Environment Report headquaters.
Now, I’ll let you in on a little secret, the real maple syrup was
sample number three.

(Taster 1:)”Three is disgusting. I wouldn’t feed it to anyone. Awww,
gawd!”

(Taster 2:) “Three and four both have sort of a smoky flavor to them
which makes me think maybe it was boiled over a wood fire.”

(Taster 3:) “I think one, I think one is definitely store-bought, but
it’s really good. If two is the maple syrup, I’m really disappointed
because it’s awful. I hate it.”

(Taster 4:) “I chose three as the real one.”

(Taster 1:) “Three? If three is the real one, oh, my goodness.”

(Taster 4:) “I know. But, we’re so used to the imitation. And that’s
maybe why we don’t like it, because it is so real in flavor.”

(Taster 1:) “I’m hoping that two is the real one.”

Number two… was the corn syrup. Four of the five volunteers did guess
that number three was the real maple syrup, but none of them liked it
much.

Tom Jameson says a lot of people wouldn’t have anything but real maple
syrup. And a lot of people really enjoy going out to see
demonstrations of tapping trees for the sap and to watch the sap boil
and boil for hours and hours:

“Well, I think it’s a tie back to the good old days. And when people
can kind of make a connection to back to the way things used to be,
there’s something comforting about that.”

So, every year a lot of folks head out into the woods, hauling buckets
and drills and splines, and take advantage of what they think is one of
nature’s sweetest gifts.

Johnson's house is big enough to accommodate a queen size bed in the sleeping loft. He says there's not enough room to stand up in the loft, but he can do some yoga positions. (Photo by Gregory Johnson)

By sliding panels out of the woodwork, Johnson can transform his living space from kitchen to dining room to office and back again. (Photo by Gregory Johnson)

Gregory Johnson says it's possible to live a fulfilling life with a LOT less space... especially if you want to live high-tech. He doesn't need a filing cabinet (he scans books and papers into his laptop) and he has all his entertainment needs covered by his iPod. (Photo by Gregory Johnson)

Andru Bemis spends a lot of time on the road as a traveling musician. He says he likes the feeling that he can leave town and not worry about too much going wrong with his house. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

Believe it or not... you can still have a 5,000-record collection in a 300 square foot house. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

New homes in America keep getting bigger and bigger. The average new
American home is about 2400 square feet. Moving up to a bigger house
can seem like a sign of success… or it might feel necessary for a
growing family. But in the face of pressure to buy big… some people
are choosing to downsize their homes… way, way down. Rebecca
Williams visits some of the tiniest houses on the block:
http://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/williams_031907.mp3

Transcript

New homes in America keep getting bigger and bigger. The average new
American home is about 2400 square feet. Moving up to a bigger house
can seem like a sign of success… or it might feel necessary for a
growing family. But in the face of pressure to buy big… some people
are choosing to downsize their homes… way, way down. Rebecca
Williams visits some of the tiniest houses on the block:

“Here it is, you’ve just about seen it. You’re standing looking at the
kitchen, you’re standing in the living room, there’s a study, and
there’s a bathroom behind that wall and somewhere above the bathroom there’s a
bed.”

It takes a hop, skip and a jump to cross from one end to the other.
That’s because his house is 300 square feet. Total.

Andru Bemis says a little house is better:

“I’m not owned by it, that’s one of the biggest things. I’ve only got
one sink I’ve gotta keep running, I’ve only got one of anything, don’t have an entire house to
take care of. I also leave town a lot and don’t have to leave an
entire house and worry about it.”

Bemis is a musician. His love of music explains the 5,000 records
lining one wall of his house and taking up precious space.

Of course he also makes room for his banjo.

(Sound of strumming)

You just don’t see tiny houses that much any more. Some, like Andru
Bemis’, are remnants from the early 20th century. His tiny house is in a sleepy
neighborhood that used to be the factory district. He’s seen other
little houses like his get torn down to build bigger new ones.

That’s one reason people are choosing to live small. They’re after a
simpler life with less stuff. A smaller house costs less to buy and
maintain. And some people argue smaller homes make better use of
resources because they just use less of everything.

Jay Shafer says building small is the greenest thing you can do with a
new home. He owns the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. He designs and
builds super small houses. He started with his own home. It was
really tiny – 70 square feet. That’s 7 feet by 10 feet.

“It’s a huge challenge – it’s much harder than designing a large house.
There’s just no room for error. And if you want to do it well and get
the proportioning right you have to consider everything as part of
everything else.”

Shafer says to live in a tiny house, you have to figure out how much
elbow room you need. Turns out, 70 square feet was a tad too small for
Jay Shafer. So he traded up to 100 square feet.

Shafer says tiny houses are a tough sell for most Americans. But some
people just love small little spaces. Shafer calls himself a
claustrophile. He’s built 10 tiny houses and sold dozens more plans.

Gregory Johnson is one of Shafer’s converts. He’s a computer
consultant in Iowa City. He lives in one of Jay Shafer’s high tech
tiny houses. It’s just 140 square feet. But with a little bit of
magic, one room turns into three.

(Sound of sliding panels)

“You can take what was an office and in about 20 seconds it converts into
a dining area with a sink off to our right because that’s the kitchen.”

Gregory Johnson says his tiny house has changed him. He says he had
his doubts at first, like the time he visited Jay Shafer at the construction
site:

“He showed this little hole I was supposed to crawl through, the
passageway to the upstairs to the loft and I thought I might have to
lose some weight to get up in there (laughs).”

Johnson says he started really scaling back. He realized if he had a
refrigerator, he’d just fill it up with ice cream and pizza. Things he
really didn’t need. So to save energy, he doesn’t have a fridge at
all. He started eating nuts and grains and fruit. By shrinking his
life down to match his house he lost 100 pounds.

Johnson says tiny spaces don’t work for everyone. But he says he has a
fulfilling life with a whole lot less stuff and space to put it in.

Many tiny house owners such as Andru Bemis want their miniature homes
to make a statement: size does matter.

(Andru Bemis song: “my house is a very small house it’s the littlest
house there is/it’s bigger than yours”)

Related Links

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to look at
whether the eastern cougar exists. The agency will be
looking in 21 states from Maine to Michigan, and down
to Tennessee. As Linda Stephan reports, the review
could end with a recommendation to remove its
endangered status:

Transcript

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to look at
whether the eastern cougar exists. The agency will be
looking in 21 states from Maine to Michigan, and down
to Tennessee. As Linda Stephan reports, the review
could end with a recommendation to remove its
endangered status:

Officials have long presumed that the Eastern cougar
is extinct, and they say it’s not probable they’ll
find evidence of the large, evasive cat east of the
Mississippi in this review.

Mike DeCapita says it’s more likely officials will
find there never was an Eastern cougar that’s any
different from the cats found in Western states. He’s
a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife
Service:

“The next question then after that would be, does the
cougar subspecies, the single subspecies in North
America warrant listing? And my speculation would be
that it doesn’t.”

The official assumption is that there are no cougars
of any type breeding in these states, and that’s been
controversial.

Several citizen groups say there’s evidence to suggest
some are living in the wild east of the Mississippi,
and possibly breeding.

For the Environment Report, I’m Linda Stephan.

Related Links

President Bush and others are promoting more use of plant-based
material to fuel our vehicles. Scientists say they’ve taken an
important step toward more efficient production of bio-fuels. Chuck
Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

President Bush and others are promoting more use of plant-based
material to fuel our vehicles. Scientists say they’ve taken an
important step toward more efficient production of bio-fuels. Chuck
Quirmbach reports:

Biofuel producers say they need to get a common plant sugar called
xylose to ferment to get an efficient conversion of plant material into
fuels like ethanol.

Researchers from the US Forest Products Lab and the Department of
Energy are working on the problem. They say they’ve now completed a
genetic map of a yeast that helps xylose ferment faster.

Micro-biologist Thomas Jeffries says with the new information about the
yeast, researchers plan to do more genetic tweaking:

“Well, we’ve been able to increase the specific fermentation rate of
this organism with one of our mutations, we’ve been able to increase it
by 50%, we really are aiming to get a four-fold increase.”

But Jeffries cautions there are still many steps before the work with
the yeast might pay off at your local gas station.

For the Environment report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach

Related Links

A team of horses drags a dead ash tree through the woods to be milled into usable lumber. Tens of millions of ash trees have been killed by a bug imported from China called the emerald ash borer. (Photo by Lester Graham)

John Yarema is a hardwood flooring company owner who suggested a new library could use the wood from dead ash trees on the very same property. (Photo by Lester Graham)

As the emerald ash borer is spread, millions of ash trees have been cut down to try to contain the insect infestation. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Ash trees are dying by the millions because of an infestation of a
foreign bug. In one town, they’re using the dead wood to help build a
library. Lester Graham reports the wood beams and flooring will be a
permanent exhibit to remind visitors of the trees that were once there
and the cost of imported pests:
http://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/graham_031207.mp3

Transcript

Ash trees are dying by the millions because of an infestation of a
foreign bug. In one town, they’re using the dead wood to help build a
library. Lester Graham reports the wood beams and flooring will be a
permanent exhibit to remind visitors of the trees that were once there
and the cost of imported pests:

Craig Novotney is driving a team of black draft horses, some young
Percherons, through a wood lot. They’re dragging a pretty good sized
log out into the open to be trucked away and turned into lumber. They
could have used a bulldozer to do this job, but that would have damaged
a lot of the other trees in these woods:

“It’s a lot less impact on the forest floor. You don’t ruin near as
much stuff, you know, getting it out with horses. It’s a kind of
lighter approach to it.”

Sixty ash trees have been cut down on this four-acre piece of land.
They were all dead, killed by a bug called the emerald ash borer. The
wood from these dead trees will be used to make flooring, wood trim,
and to be support beams for a new branch library.

The architects knew they wanted to use ash, as a way of reminding
people of this disappearing natural resource. But it was the flooring
contractor who suggested the ash wood they needed was on the very
property where the library is to be built.

John Yarema owns Johnson Hardwood Floors:

“We were originally came out to look at flooring and ash. And when we
told them we could use the material off the site, they were excited.”

Rather than just flooring, Yarema suggested the architects use the dead
ash trees for some of the structure of the building, so that people
could see the damage the emerald ash borer had done, a sort of
permanent exhibit.

The trees will still bear the marks of the damage done by the bug.
The ash tree is a popular tree, but like this place where they’re
chopping down the trees, city after city has had to cut down all of
their ash trees in an effort to stop the spread of the emerald ash
borer.

Despite efforts to quarantine infested areas, the emerald ash borer
is spreading. It was first detected in Michigan in 2002. It probably
came in shipping crates from China. The pest already has spread to a
half dozen other states and Ontario. The bug is being spread in part by people
hauling firewood with them on vacation and hunting trips, and in some
cases by nursery stock being shipped out of the area.

Josie Parker is the Director of the Library District in Ann Arbor,
Michigan where this new branch library is being built.

“Because it’s a public building, it will tell the story of what can
happen and did when there’s an infestation. This building will always
be here. The emerald ash borer tracings will be evident in the wood.
So, we’ll be able to explain (to) science classes and anyone who’s
interested what happened to ash trees and why we need to be more
careful about insect infestations.”

A lot of the dead ash has been cut up for firewood. But some people
have felt that the wood shouldn’t be wasted. It should be preserved
somehow. John Yarema says it makes him sad, seeing the ash tree
disappear. But, he likes the idea of using these ash trees in a way
that might serve as a lesson:

“It’s nice in the sense that it’s in an educational facility and not
chopped up into firewood. So, in that way, you feel better than
burning it in a fireplace. If we can make a statement and maybe
somebody will look at it, maybe a child will look at it and say, you
know, ‘Wow, this is…’ because (in) 40 years there aren’t going to be
any. The only ash trees that’ll be around will be in the flooring, the
walls, the ceiling and in the structure. I think we just all need to
open our eyes and hope for the best, I guess.”

The Sappi paper mill in Cloquet Minnesota produces most of the electricity it needs, using steam that also powers the industrial process. Sappi can even sell power when demand is high. Electric co-generation is enjoying a come-back. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)

Keith Matzdorf and Rick Morgan maintain three electric generators at the Sappi paper mill. This one burns byproducts of the paper-making process, and returns steam to the process while making electricity. The equipment is from Czechoslovakia and Sweden. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)

Transcript

More and mores states are establishing a “renewable energy standard”
for their electric utilities. So far, wind power is producing the bulk
of renewable energy. But there are other sources. Some are brand new.
Others have been around for a long time. Stephanie Hemphill reports:

The first thing to know about electricity is that making it can be
incredibly inefficient.

In a conventional power plant, burning fuel turns water into steam.
The steam drives a turbine, which spins the generator. Only about a
third of the energy in the original fuel is converted to electricity.
Two thirds goes up the smokestack in the form of heat.

“Every time you convert energy from one form to another, you lose
something. That’s just the way it is, ’cause nothing’s perfect.”

Dwight Anderson works for Minnesota Power. He’s lived with that
inefficiency for his whole working life. Now, he’s trying to wring
more electric power out of every bit of fuel.

He’s high on something called co-generation. The basic idea is to
harness the heat or steam that normally goes up the smokestack.
There’s a good example of co-generation at the Sappi paper mill in
Cloquet, in northern Minnesota. Like many paper mills, Sappi makes
most of the electricity it needs.

Engineering Manager Rick Morgan points to a mountain of wood chips:

“We have about 20,000 tons of biomass stored.”

That’ll last less than a month. The plant uses 53,000 watts, enough to
power a small city.

Inside the sprawling buildings, there are several electric generators.
One of them is fueled by a recovery boiler, which burns the byproducts
of the paper-making process, to run steam through a turbine.

“…The actual turbine is manufactured in Czechoslovakia and the generator’s
made in Vestros, Sweden.”

Higher pressure steam spins the turbine to produce electricity. The
waste steam from the same boiler goes to the pulp dryer, the paper
machines, and other parts of the process.

Back in his office, Rick Morgan says energy is the fourth largest
expense for paper mills:

“If you can’t control energy costs in this business, you can’t be in
business.”

The main product here is paper, but sometimes Sappi sells electricity
too. That happened during a recent cold snap:

“The electric demand increases and the costs go higher and higher, to
the point that it’s financially feasible for us to generate power for
Minnesota Power.”

Opportunities to produce electricity turn up in some surprising places.
Like along natural gas pipelines. The pressure has to be boosted
periodically as the gas travels through the pipe. Compressors fueled
by the natural gas do that work, and normally they vent off waste heat.

But now in South Dakota, the waste heat is fueling small power plants.
They look like the barns and silos of a farm. The generator itself is
about the size of a truck.

Basin Electric Power Coop spokesman Daryl Hill says the plants are
owned and operated by an Israeli company, and the co-op buys the power:

“We get basically 22 megawatts of baseload for little investment.”

Other countries are leading in these approaches because their fuel
prices have been so high. As prices go up in the U.S., power producers
are finding ways to use more efficient technologies, and they’re
returning to old-fashioned ideas like combined heat and power. This is
a form of co-generation that was once common across the country.

A central electric plant uses its waste steam to heat buildings. Of
course, most people don’t want to live next to a coal-fired power
plant. But Neal Elliott, with the American Council for an Energy-
Efficient Economy, says with combined heat and power, cleaner fuels,
like natural gas, can become competitive:

“Use natural gas, but use it much more efficiently. And instead of
throwing more than half of the fuel value away, let’s do it with co-
gen.”

Elliott says combined heat and power and other forms of co-generation
could provide 20% of America’s electricity needs, and save on heating
fuel at the same time. And he says recovered energy generation like
along the natural gas pipelines could provide another 20%.

Related Links

Fuel cell-powered cars will be much simpler and cheaper to build than internal combustion engine-powered vehicles. (Photo courtesy of Ford Motor Company)

Diagram of a fuel cell. (Image courtesy of Ford Motor Company)

Hydrogen fuel cells have been billed as the next big thing for cutting
down on vehicle emissions. Cars that run on these fuel cells emit only
water. Automakers are investing heavily in the technology, and there
are still some major obstacles. But as Dustin Dwyer reports, there is
at least one big advantage for automakers to push fuel cells:
http://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/dwyer_031207.mp3

Transcript

Hydrogen fuel cells have been billed as the next big thing for cutting
down on vehicle emissions. Cars that run on these fuel cells emit only
water. Automakers are investing heavily in the technology, and there
are still some major obstacles. But as Dustin Dwyer reports, there is
at least one big advantage for automakers to push fuel cells:

Of course, automakers want to be seen working on something that could
be good for the environment, and people in the industry will tell you
there are a number of reasons for pushing fuel cells. But there’s one
reason that might matter more than all the others.

(Sound of music…”money, money, money”)

Yep, money.

And if you don’t believe ABBA, you can just take it from Larry Burns.
He’s the head of research and development at General Motors. GM says
it’s spent more than a billion dollars developing fuel cell technology.
That’s money a company like GM can’t afford to waste.

At a recent energy symposium, Burns broke it all down, and talked about
the real reason GM is involved in the technology:

“First of all, we want to accelerate industry growth, for business
reasons. In fact, if I was up here telling you we were doing it for
reasons other than business reasons, you shouldn’t take me sincerely.”

So, what are those business reasons?

For Larry Burns it starts with the fact that today only 12 percent of
people worldwide own a car. To get the other 88 percent, Burns says
future vehicles need to be cheap and clean.

Some will debate whether hydrogen vehicles would truly be clean. They
say, at best, hydrogen just shifts the pollution upstream to the power
plant.

As for the cheap part, that’s also a problem. Right now, prototype fuel
cell cars cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to make. But fuel cells
have a few things going for them on the cost front. Take Ford’s newHySeries Drive Hybrid Edge prototype.

Engineer Mujeeb Ijaz looks under the hood:

“So I guess the first thing you’ll notice when you look under the hood
of the Edge is it doesn’t have a lot of equipment here. In fact, it’s
quite empty.”

It’s empty because all the important stuff, including the fuel cell, is
tucked in a sleek package hidden underneath the vehicle.

The fuel cell itself is only about six inches high, and about as big
around as a coffee table. That’s an incredibly simple design compared
to today’s complicated and clunky internal combustion engines:

“There’s a lot of technology that goes into it, but from a fundamental
standpoint, when you lay out a fuel cell and you lay out an engine,
we’re not dealing with a lot of unique parts.”

So, unlike an engine that has to be machined and assembled in different
ways for most vehicles around the world, a fuel cell only has a few
parts that get stacked together the same way every time. That means
once they ramp up to mass production, fuel cells could save automakers
a lot of, well…

(Sound of music…”money, it’s a gas”)

But before automakers can save all that fuel cell money, they still
have to answer all the questions about where the hydrogen itself comes
from, how to get it into gas stations, and how to store it in the
vehicle.

Automakers say they can make it work. But not everyone agrees. Joseph
Romm is an expert on energy issues, and he says, a lot of the problems
with hydrogen fuel cells might be out of automakers’ hands:

“Each of them probably requires a major technology breakthrough, and
you just don’t know. You might see a breakthrough in five years, you
might not see a breakthrough for fifty years.”

Romm wrote a book called The Hype About Hydrogen. He says fuel
cells have long been thought to be just over the horizon:

“Fuel cells are always just 10 or 20 years away, and so it allows the
car company to seem like they’re doing something for the environment,
without actually having to do anything.”

Romm says he’d bet on better battery technology and biofuels to cut
down on gas use.

Regardless of who’s right, what’s clear is that the auto industry could
be on the verge of a revolutionary change, one that could be good news
for the environment: the end of the internal combustion engine.

It won’t happen just to make people feel good, or to save the
environment.

Garlic mustard is an exotic species in some places, so it doesn't have any natural predators. That means it can push out native plant species and disrupt ecosystems. Researchers are trying to find ways to prevent this by targeting smaller populations. (Photo by Corbin Sullivan)

Transcript

Invasive species cost the United States economy some 120 billion
dollars per year. Adam Allington reports some researchers plan study
new methods of controlling and eliminating some invasive plants:

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis are developing a
model that targets small populations of invasive plants before honing
in on big clusters.

Dr. Tiffany Knight says the idea is that small populations often spread
quicker then larger ones:

“If you can focus your efforts on satellite individuals that are just
at the front of where the population is spreading, it might be a more
efficient method which saves time and money of managers.”

The invasive plant they’re working with is garlic mustard. It’s a
European species that spreads by out-competing native plants on the
forest floor.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is funding the research, banking on
the idea that a method which effectively controls garlic mustard, might
also be applied to other invasives such as kudzu, which is
devastating Southern forests, or spartina, which is causing troubles in
coastal areas.

Transcript

Hundreds of electric power plants might have to find alternate
methods of cooling in the future. As Tracy Samilton reports, a federal
appeals court judge says the plants are killing too many fish:

For electric power plants located near water, it’s cheap and efficient
to run lots of water through the plants for cooling. But untold
numbers of fish and other aquatic life are killed in the process.
Eddie Scher is a spokesman for the environmental group Waterkeeper
Alliance. He says overall, the industry might kill a trillion fish or
more each year.

“It’s funny that we sit around and talk about other
problems with our fisheries – there are other problems with our
fisheries – but – this is big one!”

A federal appeals court recently ordered the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency to change its rules regarding cooling systems, and to
place fish first and costs to the industry second. The electric power
industry says new cooling systems could cost millions per plant, and
instead, they should be allowed to restock fish to replace the ones
they’ve killed.